engleski

Raising cultural awareness in the primary foreign language classroom

In this graduation thesis, the development of students’ cultural awareness is explored. The thesis consists of the theoretical part and the research. The purpose of the first part is the presentation of the theoretical background regarding the development of cultural awareness and intercultural competence. The results of the research are presented in the second part. The research was conducted in one sixth grade in primary school in Hrvatsko zagorje. Fifteen (15) students participated in the research, five girls and ten boys. The students were asked to fill in a questionnaire consisting of six parts. The first part of the questionnaire was used to collect some general information about the participants, the second and the third part aimed at discovering students’ knowledge about different cultures, the following two parts consisted of Likert-type scales and the last part contained an open-ended question regarding the meaning of the word ‘stereotype’. The questionnaire was written in Croatian, but for the purposes of this graduation thesis, the questions and results have been translated into English. The students completed the questionnaire individually. The aim of the research was to discover whether students develop their cultural awareness through contacts with the media and the environment or need a teacher who will guide them in the process. The hypothesis was that the teacher plays an important role in developing students’ cultural awareness. Results have shown that students get some factual knowledge about other cultures from media, but they do not critically evaluate these cultural concepts, more precisely, they do not develop cultural awareness. Furthermore, results have shown that students have some misconceptions about certain cultures, because of the way they are presented in the media. In addition, some of the students showed a significant progress, although they participated in only two culture-related lessons. Taking this into consideration, foreign language teachers should leave the common frame of teaching only ‘the four language skills’ and should focus on implementing various aspects of culture in teaching, thus developing students’ intercultural communicative competence.

cultural awareness, intercultural competence, media, FL teacher

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